A Certain Gentleness

[ecosophia]

Just recently, in the wake of last month's rioting and vandalism, I've started to hear of (and in some cases from) a lot of Americans who have considered themselves liberals -- in many cases, lifelong, serious liberals -- but who are looking at the positions currently being promoted by the Democratic Party and the corporate media, and finding it impossible to square those positions with their own values. That's affected people as well known as Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi -- here's his latest, and if you notice that he's starting to sound as though he's been reading my blog, let's just say you're not alone. 

But it's also happening to a lot of ordinary Americans, who are having to deal with some very unpalatable realizations:  above all, the discovery that much of what the education industry and the corporate media have taught them to think was right and good and true is none of these things.  That's a bitter pill to swallow -- especially if you've been taught to build your entire sense of personal worth around those beliefs, as most people on the leftward end of politics have been told to do. 

If, dear reader, you happen to know someone who's going through this process -- a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a coworker -- now is not the time to point fingers and say "I told you so." A certain gentleness, a certain degree of courtesy and patience, and a little compassion is what's called for. Remember that these people are seeing their entire worldview crumble around them.  To the extent that you can, give them the kind of support you'd like to have if you were going through some similar process. 

And if, dear reader, you are one of the people who's having to rethink a longtime commitment to the political Left, I'd encourage you to talk with a conservative. One of the central lies that's been pushed at you by the corporate media is the claim that anyone noticeably to the right of Antifa must by definition be a bona fide goose-stepping Nazi.  It ain't so; the political spectrum consists of more than its two extreme ends, and in fact there are a vast number of options in between. The world is nothing like as frightening, as crazy, or as monomaniacally one-dimensional as you've been taught, and a frank conversation with the people you've been told you must never talk to is one way to find that out. 

Comments

Good Advice

[(Anonymous)]

Thoughtfulness and courtesy will go a long way to helping people get through this . I’m anticipating a flurry of blog posts and books, in a few months or years, from people in recovery from the myth of progress. I’m hoping that people will find that middle ground and land on their feet.

Sincerely,
Brother Josephus

Re: Good Advice

[ecosophia]

One of the things all of us can do to make that happen is try to talk about that middle ground in any context where it's possible to do so. I think a lot of people are quietly longing for some other, saner alternative.

[(Anonymous)]

A well-grounded Left is possible:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/04/pers-j04.html

[ecosophia]

Of course it's possible. The difficulty we face right now, as the article by Taibbi linked in my post points out trenchantly, is that the American Left has been hijacked by the corporate elite and is no longer anything more than a stalking horse for corporate interests.

[logicalmagic83]

JMG, thank you for this reminder. So many people in my circle are more or less flapping in the wind and I just can't communicate with them right now. So I've stepped aside and I'm staying quiet. If they want to discuss things calmly, I'll give them the same courtesy. I'm resisting the urge to "write them off" as I realize that's an extreme.

[ecosophia]

You're most welcome. I know it can be difficult to deal with the craziness, but sooner or later they're going to need someone to talk to.

[(Anonymous)]

I went through this process already five years ago, and obviously survived, but then, I've always been a maverick even as a leftist. Currently, I'm some kind of independent (could still pass for leftist in a red state). It's exactly the obvious disconnect between theory and reality that made me question standard leftism, and the bizarre cult-like antics.

[ecosophia]

To judge by what I'm seeing, a lot of people are having to grapple with that disconnect right now.

Listening to the Past

[syfen]

Archdruid,

I'm going to have a digital conference with three of my friends this week to discuss organizing ourselves to better our community. We will be using Roberts Rules of Order, and focusing on establish a verity of projects that we can jointly accomplish, or support.

I'm done waiting for other people to take the lead.

Regards,

Syfen

Re: Listening to the Past

[ecosophia]

Excellent! That's how change happens, you know -- somebody says, "I'm tired of waiting for someone else to do it."

[thuley]

I've had the opposite problem: helping a very good conservative friend come to terms with the fact the free speech he holds so dear is being trampled by a president who doesn't think twice about throwing tear gas at peaceful protestors and reporters--and the capitalism he holds so dear has been replaced by a command economy in which the federal reserve gives carte blanche loans directly to major corporations that even our corrupt banking industry is too smart to lend to.

That's not to say the democrats I know have been any more coherent: they are physically incapable of saying a single thing about Biden without using the word "Trump," and the people left of them are descending into impotent violence too fast to notice the world outside their phone--which is entirely the point.

Honestly, it's driven me much further into magical development, because I don't see any solutions on the material plane. I feel like I'm living in Lu Xun's Iron House, and it would be rude to wake up my neighbors even if I was capable of doing so.

Also: thank you for writing Dark Age America, it's comforting to know there's at least one person in this country who can soberly consider the possibility of collapse without going utterly insane.

[ecosophia]

One of the appalling features of the current situation is just how fast all sides have discarded essential values such as the right to free speech. (Try tweeting "all lives matter" sometime and see how long you keep your middle-class job.) If this crisis ends without inflicting fatal damage on the mechanisms of American representative democracy, it's going to take a lot of hard work to restore the basic civil liberties we all used to think we could take for granted.

I hadn't previously encountered Lu Xun or his "iron house" metaphor! Thank you; I'll have to correct that when time permits. But magical development -- yes, that's the one really effective route out of this. As you pursue your training, it helps to do workings such as the Golden Dawn's Equinox ritual, which extend energies of blessing and healing to your surroundings and your neighbors -- they could doubtless use those just now.

[(Anonymous)]

Funny because it feels like I have been doing debriefings all week. People who wrote me off are starting to come up and ask questions, or at least engage in conversation that does not involve me getting covered with their spittle. Even though municipalities had cancelled the major 4th of July displays, the yesterday's eclipse was framed with thousands of illegal fireworks, as if to say "enough of these antifa goons and their mainstream press supporters, this country is worth standing up for".

[ecosophia]

I've never in my life heard so many fireworks going off as I did last night, and I gather from what I've read that other people had the saame experience. Keep up with the debriefings -- that's a good sign that people are beginning to come to their senses.

Hope and Sadness

[(Anonymous)]

One of my co-workers is a recent college grad. She’s starting to wake up from Lu Xun's Motor Court Inn, so I gave her a copy of Green Wizardry – a hit. Other than that, all I’ve been able to do is listen and hope. Advice welcome.
Rusty

Re: Hope and Sadness

[ecosophia]

Listening is important. If you can begin to move the conversation gently into controversial areas, that may also help.

[violetcabra]

Thank you so much for this, JMG! I really appreciate you setting a thoughtful, well-tempered example here. Certainly, were leftist friends of mine to wish to talk about their disillusionment with me, I would do my best keep your advice in mind. You're absolutely right that being kind and gentle is the decent thing to do, and again, I thank you for this cool-headed and level reminder.

[(Anonymous)]

Can you say more on what worldview is crumbling?

Sorry, I'm a bit out of the loop.

Aren't conservative's worldview and faith in Trump getting very crumbled right now?

[ecosophia]

Depends on what you mean by "conservative." The old-fashioned Bill Buckley-style elitist conservatives are in much the same boat as the elitist liberals -- melting down in a big way because those awful working class deplorables aren't doing what their soi-disant betters tell them any more. The vast majority of the Trump supporters I know, by contrast, were delighted by his speech at Mount Rushmore on the 3rd and are looking forward to the results of the DOJ investigations into the origins of the "Russiagate" hoax.

As for the worldview that's crumbling, I've written about that extensively on my blog. The very short form is that what's falling apart is privileged progressivism -- the notion that history inevitably leads to better things, and you can measure how much better things are getting by whether the comfortable classes get everything they want.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this, JMG.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Scottish fiddler Johnny Cunningham added some comments along these lines to the holiday show he used to do with Susan McKeown and Aidan Brennan. I transcribed them from a video I saw on the internet years ago. In that video, he said, "You know, there's a lot going on in the world right now that isn't very good, and the best thing we can do to help things along in the right way is to be very kind to each other and take care of each other, and the people round about us, whether we know them or not."

Words to live by in these kind of times.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this. Excellent advice!

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure how much it will help, but some liberal academics who have been studying and warning against Critical Theory for years have put together a website to help people understand Critical Theory/SocJus/Woke ideology to help them fight back against the spread in their companies/schools/etc.

https://newdiscourses.com/

I've found it helpful just to understand some of the esoteric contours and logical Kafka traps built into it. When you do listen to people caught in this, understanding what the terminology actually means and why people buy into it can help a ton - both in helping maintain compassion and in listening.

And it's these academics, which you may remember from a couple years ago: https://reason.com/2018/10/03/dog-rape-hoax-papers-pluckrose-lindsay/

[ecosophia]

I loved the "rape culture in dog parks" paper! I'm glad to hear that they're still hard at work.

not melting down

[deborah_bender]

I'm a somewhat left-leaning liberal, been one all my life. My worldview is not collapsing. A lot of American Jews are liberals, and a lot of American liberals are Jews. My politics are pretty normal for my upbringing.

Despite what Marx wrote, one thing Jewish history tells you is that the arc of history doesn't bend toward anything in particular. Sometimes things are tolerable, sometimes they are pretty good, sometimes things are horrible, and you can get these in any order for an unpredictable duration. People strive very hard to be decent and moral, and get creamed by other groups of people whose idea of decency isn't compatible and who are better at violence. Prosperity never lasts. Poverty lasts, but not forever. Tolerant societies full of intellectual ferment and cultural exchange are good while they last, but they don't last long.

The Jews have learned, as the Kurds know very well, that allies and defenders can't be relied on, no matter how much common interest you think you have with them. As the Firesign Theater marching song put it, "You-ain't-got-no-friends-on-the-right. You're left! You-ain't-got-no-friends-on-the-left. You're right!"

This may sound very disillusioned and cynical, but I don't mean it that way. There is nothing wrong with striving for a better society, or to be a better person in whatever society you are in. You just need to read Ecclesiastes and Job, and understand that you win some, you lose some.

Re: not melting down

[ecosophia]

From my perspective, this isn't disillusioned and cynical at all, it's sane. What's causing the cognitive dissonance is precisely the notion that history has a predetermined trajectory toward whatever the comfortable classes think of as goodness and justice, and since you're not subject to that delusion, you're fine.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm hoping that the fireworks did as they were originally intended in China - to chase off ghosts and demons.

Our children, by birth multicultural/multiethnic, have embraced the new "social justice" wokesterism and I'm in the odd position of having to point out to my husband, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, that we've entered a time when we must keep secrets and guard our thoughts because we will get in trouble.

I was raised in a liberal family (my mother grew up poor and as an adult she was committed to actual social justice (not the posturing type) through church. I pretty much shared her ideals, but I have to say everything has soured in recent years.

As an introvert, my social group is very small - and they're all left leaning, so there'll be no "breathing a word of anything" from me.

I'm trying to figure out how to conceptualize the "don't oppose evil, empower its opposite" teaching with all of this. Just read the N. Taleb article someone linked to last week about how an intolerant minority can coopt a relaxed majority, and am not sure how a Trump win (should it happen) this Nov. will do anything but tighten the screws.

re: the unpalatable realization, "the discovery that much of what the education industry and the corporate media have taught them to think was right and good and true is none of these things" - you got that right.

The challenge is in being a bridge (without letting myself get burnt) to show our children that we don't have to maintain the Party line to be good and true and right. As of now, any slip-up is suspect. I hope we survive this.

[(Anonymous)]

so there'll be no "breathing a word of anything" from me.

I know what you're going through. It's bad when you have to hide your true feelings because if you don't you'll get dogpiled (or doxxed, or fired, or physically threatened), and extra bad when you have to create alternate social media accounts just to speak safely.

[lincoln_lynx]

It's nice hearing that a couple Leftists are waking up.

Those I know had a hard time seeing Good People's statues torn down alongside the Bad People's. They were able to doze back off though when the articles talking about Alt-Righters pretending to be Antifa came out.

The comforting thing about believing the Left is possessed by demons

[kimberlysteele]

As you know, JMG, I believe the Left is infested by demons. My quirky belief helps me to be more sympathetic to their plight. They know not what they do. In my estimation, they are being victimized and used by the devolutionary, parasitic entities who are riding them right now, "helping" them to riot, to posture, to scream into the air for 45 seconds at a stretch. Many of them may not survive the current era of Peak Possession.

My strategy with the handful of leftist pals gripped by demonic glamour is to keep them at a careful distance. I refuse to discuss political matters with them at all. They are also not invited into my house until this whole thing blows over. I had dinner with a leftist friend last week and we talked only of vegan things and family. Another friend who lives outside the country and has gone lunatic with TDS finds me to be a brick wall when it comes to discussing Trump. I have told him flat out I will not discuss Trump with him.

I have my sights set on the election. If they can't rid themselves of their demonic obsession sometime after November 4, I will re-assess the relationships and do divinations to see whether or not I should do a cut and clear. I don't think it will come to that though.

Re: The comforting thing about believing the Left is possessed by demons

[(Anonymous)]

Kimberly,
I think you're really onto something. Being a wall since nothing else works. It's like a mechanical force that comes at you over and over as if the words you say never touched their minds at all.
Plus the hysterical, instant antics - as if a button was pushed.

[(Anonymous)]

John--

I don't have much occasion to talk with others about politics, outside of these two blogs, but i suspect there are many who are walking the path i did so many years ago. It has been a long march indeed from 2014 or 2015, going from "how can we save to system?" to "the system can't be saved" to "there's no need to save the system." And politically, the realization that the party for which I'd voted all my adult life (with one or two exceptions) had long ago betrayed its legacy as the party of the "common man." So I can understand what some may be going through.

Until 2016, there were no alternatives. I'm hopeful that additional (and better) alternatives come from the fundamental political realignment that is underway right now. Alas, the party I wish had been the vehicle of the needed change has decided to cast itself as the upholder of the status quo.

A future Worker's Alliance candidate could do worse for a campaign slogan than "American jobs making American products for American markets."

--David BTL

[(Anonymous)]

As I said in a comment last week, I think it's unhelpful, and possibly dangerous, to use the word "Left" in this context. No traditional leftist would give the SJWs the time of day. This is not a battle between extremes, and the opposite of the SJWs is not Trump. Effectively, the way politics is practised in most western countries today (though not the underlying ideological issues, obviously) has nothing to do with Right and Left. Instead, we have the Monoparty, with its Wall Street Wing and its Silicon Valley/University Wing, which largely share the same assumptions, but which, as always with single large parties, have factions which fight viciously over unimportant issues. In most western countries, ordinary people have effectively no political representation at all. The Monoparty's ideology is an extreme economic and social liberalism, which trashes the past, destroys societies and forces people to fight against each other. It's hardly surprising that in a number of countries, we have started to see a tactical rapprochement of the traditional Left and the traditional Right to see what can be saved. The Wall St Wing has an official ideology of neoliberal economics, and the Silicon Valley/University Wing has an official ideology based on badly translated and poorly understood post-modernist theory. But neither is more than a facade, and mechanism for entering power and control, as Foucault would have been the first to point out.

[(Anonymous)]

Having been until recent years, I know many traditional leftists who've done far more than give SJWs the time of day. They either are SJWs or they support them to a greater or lesser extent. There's no shortage of them on places like twitter if you'd like to go and ask them what their rationale is. They'll be very happy to explain. Of course, if you define a 'traditional leftist' as 'someone who would never give SJWs the time of day', well, 'No True Scotsman' has always been a popular game.

a comic showing one who isn't ready for the help we are discussing here

[chaosadventurer]

just clearly shows the start of part of the mindset that lead to it.
how humor can be so on point at time as this came out this morning.

"Typing"
http://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/comic/1990-typing/

[(Anonymous)]

As someone raised in a left-wing subculture who has expanded my thinking dramatically over the last many years (your writing has been no small part of introducing new perspectives), I appreciate this post very much. And I hope your readers and commentariat will take it to heart.

Especially because I've noticed here and especially over on the open posts on the other blog, a kind of creeping tendency to paint n overly simplistic picture of one's political opponents, along the line of "those crazy leftists who support indefinite lockdowns, riots and are totally brainwashed...etc."
Who comes to mind is an acquaintance of mine, a very smart and dignified older black man who, when I last saw him, was wearing a "black lives matter" wristband, and speaks very eloquently of his lifelong experiences of systemic racism, AND (very correctly, to my view) thinks this whole "COVID is the worst thing ever" stuff is dubious nonsense. In other words, a thinking person who one might disagree with strongly on some issues, and agree with on others, who is willing to talk, listen, and seek common ground.

Having spent a lot of time in left-wing circles where people routinely dismiss "those crazy conservatives who love machine guns and hate women and eat too much meat...etc," I'd hate to see it become the norm for equally lazy and overhyped rhetoric to be flung back the other way. We've got to know that won't get us anywhere. I'd invite everyone reading this to call to mind one person with whom they disagree politically in a significant way, who they nonetheless respect and find worthy of admiration, and spend a moment appreciating that person. And if you can't think of any such person, get looking!

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, I'd just like to point out something that most commenters here seem to be unaware of: the Left, the ACTUAL Left, isn't buying into this corporate co-opting of what seems to have started on the ground, following May 25th, as a real mass movement. We see it as a desperate attempt to distract and drain momentum from the actual demands of grass-roots activists: extensive reform/restructuring of the criminal justice system. We aren't even asking for most of these toothless symbolic gestures. I have no idea who these Twitter-trolls are with some of the most nonsense demands.

I would also like to apologize on behalf of some of my comrades for the rhetoric getting so heated and one-sided lately -_-

~Grey Q

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking for myself, it's not that I'm unaware of the claim you're making, it's that I disagree with it. As do many other people.

This gentleness thing is exceptionally difficult JMG, but I'll try to roleplay it for a while.

OT comet

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

on a MM thread yesterday, there was an unsettling consideration of a certain CS Lewis book, and someone asked if there was anything going on with Venus lately. There is a comet now visible to the eye, rising in the early morning with Venus. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5639220

I should also note, that with my tarot draw on the US election, I made a mistake I frequently do, in being rather unspecific with my question. "What Trump brings to the election" clearly is more than just himself, when he brings the Ga'ashekelah (inverted 4W) to the business, and the Democrats are hardly his opponents, when I asked "and what does his opposition bring?" and got a 7 of cups.

Bring kindness, indeed.

-pixelated

[wandering_raven]

Excellent thoughts. Thank you for sharing this. Like most of your thoughts, it is rational and compassionate at the same time.

[(Anonymous)]

I really, really hope things go the way you hope, JMG. I haven't seen much sign of it, and the last couple years have been extremely unnerving to me. And, with full apologies, I'm going to borrow the structure of one of JMG's better posts and explain why everyone in America ought to be scared shaleless right now.

Once upon a time, you see, there was a certain country whose population consisted of a patchwork of different ethnic groups, none of which was really strong enough to dominate any of the others. Things between these ethnic groups had not always been good-in the 19th and early 20th centuries, this country had seen its fair share of ethnic violence, sometimes rising to full-scale warfare. At various times and various places, different ethnic groups had held differing shares of power and constantly competed with each other, with whatever the dominant ethnic group happened to be discriminating against the others in varying degrees. Though the ethnic groups had lived side by side for centuries, there was a lot of bad blood between them. Pretty much everyone in this country could locate a time in history in which their ancestors had been oppressed-or worse-by somebody else's ancestors.

World War II, however, seemed to provide a turning point for our little nation. Though the war itself brought on a good deal of ethnic violence, the struggle against the Axis ultimately overcame all ethnic divisions, and the country united behind a new elite, espousing a new trans-ethnic ideology that dedicated itself to bringing peace, equality, and brotherhood to the entire world-and in the meantime, asked all the ethnic groups to put aside their historical differences and unite for the betterment of each other and, ultimately, for the welfare of all mankind. The people of this society, torn apart by years of war and the Great Depression before that, were more than happy to oblige.

In actual practice, the ideology of this new elite turned out to be bureaucratic management-in the years after the war, reams upon reams of agencies, departments, trade unions, and party precincts mushroomed throughout the land. The first few decades were relatively successful-the elite brought increasing prosperity and mesmerized the populace with promises of a glorious future in which science and technology would eliminate poverty, the old cultural and religious differences would be subsumed by a new rationalism, and eventually the entire world would grow into the boundlessly happy utopia it deserved to be.

Utopia, however, failed to arrive on schedule, and the endless bureaucracies that ran the country gradually stagnated, obsessed with petty internicene struggles and ultimately too divided against one another to provide real leadership. As the managerial elite grew more and more sclerotic, less and less able to even run the present to an acceptable degree, the intellegensia and other avant-garde sections of society stopped believing in the glorious future they'd been promised, and began to look around for alternatives.

For all too many intellectuals, the alternative turned out to be ethnic chauvinism. People raised on failed notions of rationalist utopia began looking at their roots, and soon found all the times in which their ancestors had gotten the short end of the stick-or the business end of the steel-toed boot. Utterly horrified, and still longing for some utopian ideal to believe in, these people rapidly convinced themselves that if only the injustices of history could be reversed, if only their ancestors could get back everything the other conniving ethnicities had stolen from them, all would be right with the world.

Thus, the intellectual partisans of each ethnicity began an ever more furious war of words, with the main weapons being hackneyed, one-sided versions of the country's history. Typically, these were very efficient at finding all the events in the past in which the author's ethnicity had been victimized, and utterly blind to anything that might make the author's ethnicity look bad. But the real kicker-the factor that added the irresitable zing of subversiveness to these canned faux-histories-was always the claim that the country's postwar elite had been a lying pack of weasels, and all that verbiage about the Universal Brotherhood of Man nothing but propaganda for all the sheeple. No, no, no, ever since World War II, the elite had all been made up of members of the other ethnicity-you know, those horrible goons that had forever put the boot on the face of the now-tenured author's kith and kin. Behind all those nice words about freedom and equality, they were doing what they'd always been doing-dominating and victimizing whatever ethnic group the author of the screed you were reading belonged too-and now, if they weren't stopped, if all the X-ians didn't rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs, the conniving Y-ians who really ran the government would keep oppressing them-no, keep murduring them-until all the X-ians had been blotted from the earth. It was Now or Never!

For a couple of decades, this sort of thing was confined to academia and the political underground, and the country's elite did a respectable job of containing it, and making sure the worst offenders had their careers ruined before they could do any real damage (of course, this only added to the narratives of victimization and oppression the ethnic chauvinists were pushing). To an outside observer-and indeed, to most inside observers-everything seemed fine. The fringe partisans of chauvinism nonwithstanding, inter-ethnic relations were generally good, and the number of inter-ethnic marriages even rose. The bureaucratic elites and their official ideology maintained their iron grip on the country's politics-sure, their rule became more sclerotic and less effective by the year, but like an old, tall tree whose roots are dying, it was often hard to see the rot from the outside.

Eventually, though, the failures of the governing ideology became more and more obvious, and not only intellectuals, but ever larger sections of the populace ceased to believe in it-or turned out never to have believed in it in the first place. As more and more people cast around for some belief system to replace the failing ideology of their childhood, the lure of ethnic nationalism proved irresistable. Eventually, a growing number of establishment bureaucrats and politicians came to realize that their system was circling the drain, and that the best way to maintain-or even increase-their power was to co-opt the growing trend of ethnic chauvinism, start mouthing the right slogans and rally the oppressed X-ians or Y-ians to their cause. In a perverse way, the new chauvinist ethnic parties fed off each other-to rally its own ethnicity, the Party for X-ian Renewal only had to point to the extremist, violent rhetoric of the Democratic Y-ian Party. As the extremist Y-ians made speech after speech about the glorious utopia that would come when X-ian power was smashed, ordinary X-ians-feeling both insulted and terrified-flocked to their own ethnic chauvinists, who promised to protect them from the growing Y-ian menace. Meanwhile, the Y-ian chauvinists were using all that verbiage about the "Y-ian menace" to the same effect.

When the old, postwar ideology finally did collapse, it did so in an unbelievably short time-only two or three years. But even as ethnic mobs rioted in the streets against each other and the old, discredited elite, as ethnic militias armed themselves, as a climate of uncertainty and fear descended on the nation and ethnic chauvinist politics swept all before it-even then, almost nobody in the People's Republic of Yugoslavia could imagine the utter hell their country was about to descend into.

I hope to God America somehow escapes the spiral of madness we're being sucked into. Because if we don't, our fate could be more horrifying than any of us know.

Jordan Peterson

[davidtrammel]

I know JMG doesn't watch videos but I have been, especially some from a Canadian named Jordan Peterson. I wondered what everyone thought of his opinions?

He has some rather harsh words for the whole SJW culture but I know he has some opinions on gender issues that rub many in that group raw. I do find myself agreeing with many of his points on basic diversity and male/female roles though.

I've watched about 5-6 hours of his stuff so far, still not sure what to think of him but he does make you think hard about your preconceptions.

Re: Jordan Peterson

[hearthspirit]

Hey David,

My aunt once gave me a copy of Peterson's book when he first crashed into the news cycle up here (maybe his first one, perhaps he's written others since). I enjoyed the first part okay, but I couldn't finish it - I got to the part where he'd had recurring dreams of rising up into the heights of a chapel, and looking down at the rest of us, that I figured it was better to distance oneself from what he's got. That is a dream certain types of people under certain types of influences best represented by the Qlippoth of Chesed tend to have, and it doesn't end well for them or their followers, if you savvy.

I think, FWIW, that he does see important things, important things that maybe are important counters to other rhetoric out there. They are the same things that Trump voices. And they are imbalanced and through a mirror darkly in the same way, I think. And they come from the same genuine contact with higher powers, in the truly unbalancing way of an unprepared mortal who got there over-using his intellect. In terms of where the imbalance in real world information he's putting out there is, specifially, he is contorting and extending past useful utility his insights based on evolutionary biology in much the way his opponents do. He's fine to follow: to a point. But he goes past that point into madness with increasing frequency.

I think the most thoughtful explanation of the problem (and see other notes about Peterson's behavior patterns for more clues about the imbalances behind him) is from this guy: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html. However, I now see that article is behind a paywall and will cost $1. At least the first paragraph visible references the same impulse he describes in his book from his dream...